美国国家公共电台 NPR How Identity Has Changed — And Hasn't — Over 40 Years Of 'Morning Edition'

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

All this week, we have been looking back at 40 years of MORNING EDITION through the lens of, among other things, politics, science and culture. Today, we're taking a look at race and identity and how conversations about those things have and have not changed over the last 40 years. I'm joined by Maria Hinojosa, the host of Latino USA. Hi, Maria.

MARIA HINOJOSA, BYLINE¹: Hey there.

KING: And Gene² Demby, who's the co-host of NPR's Code Switch podcast. Hi, Gene.

GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Hey, Noel.

KING: All right. So, you guys, question to you both. Forty years of race and culture - there is a lot to talk about there - where do you want to start?

HINOJOSA: (Laughter) A lot.

DEMBY: I mean, there's, like, a bewildering number of stories to tell about race and, you know, flashpoints around policing, these tectonic cultural shifts, like the rise of hip-hop. We should probably just zero in on a few things that were making headlines in 1979 that we're still sort of grappling with today, like back when MORNING EDITION was starting, you know, cities and counties all over the country were still trying to figure out how to do school integration³. There were these big fights over busing. And it's safe to say that the anti-integration forces effectively won that fight. I mean, today in 2019, American schools by most measures are more segregated⁴ now than they were in the '60s.

HINOJOSA: So there's something else that was going on. In 1980, the United States was about 83% white. Today, it's estimated about 72% white. You know, some people call it the browning of America. People who are part of that browning - I don't know if they like that term, but that has been a central part of what's happened over these couple of decades.

KING: So 40 years ago in 1979, Americans were getting ready to vote for president. How was race playing out at that point in that race?

DEMBY: Well, as Maria pointed⁵ out, the electorate⁶ was obviously much whiter than it is today. And Ronald Reagan was courting a much whiter mainstream⁷. He famously - or infamously⁸, depending on who you ask - gave a speech defending states' rights at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi. Neshoba County was about seven miles from where three civil rights activists⁹ were killed in Mississippi.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RONALD REAGAN: I believe in states' rights. And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today.

DEMBY: That tape's a little fuzzy there, but he was talking about states' rights, and states' rights, of course, was a code word for segregationists. And he was speaking to anti-integration sentiment in the South.

KING: You know, I think a lot of people forget that President Ronald Reagan put in place a blanket amnesty for undocumented immigrants way back in 1986.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

REAGAN: I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.

KING: Maria, that sounds extraordinary when you think about it today.

HINOJOSA: Well, this is a really fascinating conversation because, you know, if you think about the Republican Party now, it has won on an anti-immigrant build a wall, you know, immigrants and refugees are dangerous people. The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and of George H.W. Bush was really a party that was saying we think we could lock up the Latino vote. And one of the ways to do that was to be very open on immigration. George H.W. Bush father (ph) - when he comes in, he actually ups the number of refugees, the opposite of what the Republican Party is doing now. And interestingly, then Bill Clinton comes in and was actually very anti-immigrant. There's this commercial where he comes out saying, you know, like, I'm going to take care of these illegal immigrants. I'm going to cut - you know, I'm going to come down hard.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: President Clinton doubled border agents; 160,000 illegal immigrants and criminals deported¹⁰ - a record.

KING: Bill Clinton, in many ways, was running to the right of President George H.W. Bush.

HINOJOSA: That's absolutely true. But, you know, something happens that really shifts the conversation on immigration, and that's September 11. So, you know, it would have been that George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox were about to sign this massive immigration legislation that would have, again, legalized so many people. It would have probably locked in the Latino vote for the Republican Party except that September 11 happened.

KING: And so we move forward couple of years, and we have this massive, massive, massive, massive thing happen, which is this country elects a black president. And then everything's OK.

DEMBY: (Laughter) If only.

KING: I'm sorry.

DEMBY: Yeah. Things don't magically get better for people of color just because we have a black president. In fact, Obama's election in some ways might have elevated the sense of frustration¹¹ for some people of color, especially black people. So a historian told me about this theory in social science. It's called the revolution of rising expectations. So in the 1960s, you get intense uprisings in inner cities in the years following landmark¹² civil rights bills, like the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, and you flash-forward to 2014 when a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., shoots an unarmed African American 18-year-old, and the protests that erupted after that were incredibly powerful.

And this all happened when we had a black president, which probably was an important part of the context of those protests in places like Ferguson and in New York after the death of Eric Garner¹³ because there was a sense that things was supposed to be different. And they weren't different. Many Latinx people were frustrated¹⁴ as well because Obama became known as the deporter in chief as undocumented immigrants were deported in record numbers.

HINOJOSA: Right. Obama ends up taking Bill Clinton's enforcement policy on steroids - again, kind of having to say I'm not going to take the label of being weak on these issues of, let's say, crime or immigration. And, again, that legacy¹⁵ leads to where we are now.

DEMBY: But, Noel, it wasn't all bad news.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BARACK OBAMA: I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.

DEMBY: You probably remember that when Obama first got elected, he supported civil unions but not same-sex marriage. And in his second term, his position had, quote, "evolved" and the Supreme¹⁶ Court goes on to uphold same-sex marriage. In fact, the Pew Research Center found that among Gen Z-ers (ph), which is the generation that comes after millennials, about a third of them say they know someone who uses a gender-neutral pronoun to identify themselves.

HINOJOSA: Right. Really, the last 40 years in terms of the LGBTQ community has been, like, an explosion from, again, total kind of invisibility to now, you know, legalization of gay marriage. And immigrants are actually taking cues from the LGBTQ struggle and saying we're coming out of the closet. We're saying we're undocumented, and we're unafraid. That has happened over the last 40 years. It really is extraordinary.

DEMBY: And, Noel, what's striking to me is just how many of these conversations that Americans were having in 1979, we are still having today. I mean, we still have not figured out how we make schools equitable¹⁷ - right? - across races. We're still deciding basic questions, like who gets to be American, right?

KING: Yeah. Yeah.

DEMBY: And so in 40 years, we're going to be grappling with what that looks like in a country in which most of the people, most of the Gen Z-ers, are not white. We could very much have a country that is majority brown with most of the country's wealth living with white people. We could still be wrestling with the same inequality even if numerically it looks a lot different. So I hope in 40 years, we've at least made progress in resolving some of these questions that have bedeviled us, like, since the beginning of the republic.

KING: Gene Demby is the co-host of NPR's Code Switch podcast. And Maria Hinojosa is host of the Latino USA podcast. Thank you guys both so much. We really appreciate it.

HINOJOSA: Thank you, Noel.

DEMBY: Appreciate you.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 gene   

n.遗传因子，基因

参考例句：

• A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
• The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。

3 integration   

n.一体化，联合，结合

参考例句：

• We are working to bring about closer political integration in the EU.我们正在努力实现欧盟內部更加紧密的政治一体化。
• This was the greatest event in the annals of European integration.这是欧洲统一史上最重大的事件。

4 segregated   

分开的； 被隔离的

参考例句：

• a culture in which women are segregated from men 妇女受到隔离歧视的文化
• The doctor segregated the child sick with scarlet fever. 大夫把患猩红热的孩子隔离起来。

5 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

6 electorate   

n.全体选民；选区

参考例句：

• The government was responsible to the electorate.政府对全体选民负责。
• He has the backing of almost a quarter of the electorate.他得到了几乎1/4选民的支持。

7 mainstream   

n.（思想或行为的）主流；adj.主流的

参考例句：

• Their views lie outside the mainstream of current medical opinion.他们的观点不属于当今医学界观点的主流。
• Polls are still largely reflects the mainstream sentiment.民调还在很大程度上反映了社会主流情绪。

8 infamously   

不名誉地

参考例句：

• They will not have much cause of triumph when they see how infamously I act. 当他们看到我演得那么糟糕时，他们就不会有多少理由感到胜利了。

9 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 deported   

v.将…驱逐出境( deport的过去式和过去分词 )；举止

参考例句：

• They stripped me of my citizenship and deported me. 他们剥夺我的公民资格，将我驱逐出境。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The convicts were deported to a deserted island. 罪犯们被流放到一个荒岛。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 frustration   

n.挫折，失败，失效，落空

参考例句：

• He had to fight back tears of frustration.他不得不强忍住失意的泪水。
• He beat his hands on the steering wheel in frustration.他沮丧地用手打了几下方向盘。

12 landmark   

n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标

参考例句：

• The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
• The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。

13 garner   

v.收藏；取得

参考例句：

• He has garnered extensive support for his proposals.他的提议得到了广泛的支持。
• Squirrels garner nuts for the winter.松鼠为过冬储存松果。

14 frustrated   

adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
• The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》

15 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

16 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

17 equitable   

adj.公平的；公正的

参考例句：

• This is an equitable solution to the dispute. 这是对该项争议的公正解决。
• Paying a person what he has earned is equitable. 酬其应得,乃公平之事。